Here's one that fell through the cracks: an interview with the brains behind Habbo Hotel - the phenomenally successful social virtual world. I asked Timo Soinen, CEO of development company Sulake, how Habbo became the virtual world's leading social destination for 13-16 year olds, and why gamers should be interested.

How do you think Habbo managed to become the leading virtual world for teenagers and so successful for so long? Habbo has been operating for eight years, and the user numbers around the world keep growing all the time – we still have lots of potential audience out there, we have just scratched the surface.

Even in the early days of Habbo, one of the main advantages was that it is easy to access and play: you don't need to download any software; you just need an internet browser to log into the virtual world. Habbo is also a constantly evolving product as we bring new features to the service every month, keeping it fresh to our users. In doing this we listen and react to user feedback and do continuous research to understand our users' needs. Still, the most important factor is that Habbo is all about user generated content. It has so many active users who devote time and energy to create compelling content for their friends and other Habbos. After all, Habbo is a place for its users, and they are the ones who make Habbo what it is.

64% of British kids who use Habbo report that they have friends they've never met offline according to your Global Youth Survey. This freaks a lot of people out. What do you think has allowed this phenomenon to become possible? The whole concept of friendship has new meanings in the online world - in many social online services, having a lot of friends on your friendlist can be considered to be a cool thing. This can also be witnessed in how adults use Facebook and other social networks. When asked about "real friends", teens' answers are usually between 4 and 10. But for online services, the answer can be over a 100, and in these, there most certainly are friends that they have never met in real life. Our mission is to teach our users to safeguard their personal information and learn to be extremely careful when meeting friends from the online world.

In general Habbo is about your virtual persona and anonymity. We don't allow our users to share their true identity in the service and encourage them not to do so in other services as well.

Why should gamers be interested in Habbo Hotel? This depends on what type of gamers we are talking about. As a virtual world, Habbo is a social open-ended game in itself and as such is suitable for everyone. In the Habbo world there are hundreds or even thousands of activities and quests going on all the time arranged by the users themselves. For people who like to play more traditional games, Habbo offers also a few free multiplayer games created by Sulake: SnowStorm (a virtual snow ball fight) and BattleBall, an easy to use yet in-depth strategy game where groups play against each other. There are also some casual games inside world, such as the one-on-one game WobbleSquabble, and you can also do some tricks jumping from the 100-foot high diving board.

What kinds of features are you putting into place that ensures that the content of Habbo grows with the age of the consumers? Habbo is typically a teen oriented virtual world; our core user age group being 13 to 16 year-olds. However, we have older users as well. Most of the content in Habbo is created by the users themselves - our role is to ensure that this content is not inappropriate and that the users follow the Habbo Way, our rules and code of conduct for the service. Our aim is not to appeal to adult users. To put it simply, Sulake offers tools for creativity and content creation and ensures that the environment to use these are as safe as possible.

You hold a lot of high-profile pop stars and branded events in Habbo (like Gorillaz' personal appearance a few years ago, etc). What do you say to parents who are concerned with the extended exposure their kids have to these messages? Celebrity visits have always been a really cool way for us to provide interesting content for our users. These are events that usually take place in a certain space inside the virtual world, and no one is ever forced to take part. Of course Habbo offers artists, athletes and other celebs a new and exciting way to meet their fans regardless of location.

The way in which different brands and advertisers are part of the Habbo virtual world has always been important to us. First of all, we carefully select which brands are allowed to come to Habbo, ensuring they are a good fit. We don't belive in in-your-face advertising - we want the brands to take part in the community and not just push their commercial messages.

Another type of brand/event exposure which is important to us is our cooperation with goodwill and youth organisations - we are working currently with over 30 different partners all over the world including Unicef, Red Cross, United Nations, NSPCC to name just a few.

Which other online community applications are you impressed with at the moment? Some industry experts predicted last year that 2008 would be the year of virtual worlds. Looking at the amount of applications that are currently in development you can definitely say that the experts had a point. There are lots of interesting projects on the rise, but it is hard to name any specific ones. Virtual worlds are mostly based on imaginary places, but there is one interesting project called Twinity.com, which is based on realistic 3D replicas of the world's most vibrant metropolises. It is interesting to see how it grows. Another interesting area is going to be user generated virtual spaces and mobile virtual worlds.

What are your future plans? Our primary focus for the future is to develop the Habbo virtual world continuously, and to listen to our users' demands in the process. We are also currently working on a few other virtual world projects, but it is too early to disclose any information on those.